The Pink Floyd exhibition – For more than 50 years, there has been a special relationship between the legendary British progressive rock group Pink Floyd and the city of Montreal.
Between 1971 and 1994, the band – which comprised of David Gilmour, Syd Barrett, Richard Wright, Nick Mason and Roger Waters – performed in Montreal on seven different occasions, including their epic concert on July 6, 1977, when they performed in front of nearly 80,000 fans at the Olympic Stadium.
And now the spirit of that special band-city relationship comes alive once again, as the acclaimed exhibition The Pink Floyd Exhibition: Their Mortal Remains makes its home at the Arsenal Contemporary Art gallery, located at 2020 William Street, until December 31.
At a press conference that was held at the Arsenal on November 3 to officially launch the Montreal run of the exhibition, three special guests were in attendance to talk about the exhibition and how it came about: Pink Floyd drummer and co-founder Nick Mason, Aubrey “Po” Powell, the exhibition’s Creative Director and Curator, and Michael Cohl from S2BN, a long-time collaborator of the band, and the exhibition’s Executive Producer.
“This exhibition was originally designed to be housed in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and it attracted over 450,000 visitors there, and we’re glad to have it at the Arsenal, because the space is so unconstrained,” said Powell. “Visitors and fans are going to experience things that they have never seen before about Pink Floyd.”
“I didn’t think there would be enough material to make it work. But I was so wrong, because we ended up with a lot of contributions of material from fans and friends of ours,” said Mason. “Pink Floyd and Canada has had an incredible relationship together, which had its roots when the band started working in France. Our music really resonated with the French and they were the first group of people who took us seriously. And when we started to perform in Montreal, it was absolute magic, because we found an audience that was a good combination of North America and France.”
When a reporter asked him about his reaction to the famous Olympic Stadium concert in 1977, Mason replied “It was great to know that you had 80,000 people on your side.”
As well, Powell shared with the gathered media some of his experiences with Pink Floyd, especially as the graphic designer of two of their iconic albums: Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here. “I enjoyed working on the design for Wish You Were Here, especially the album cover photo of the two men shaking hands, in which one of them is on fire. We actually set a stuntman on fire for the shoot to represent getting burned by big business. We managed to accomplish the effect; and that was before the days of computer graphics.” He added that there are plans underway to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the release of Dark Side of the Moon next year. “Right now, those plans are undisclosed, but we’ll at least have a large birthday cake!”
The Pink Floyd Exhibition: Their Mortal Remains took about four years to put together from the development of the concept to its opening in London. And if you’re a lifelong fan of the group or a recent devotee, this exhibition is quite a visual and musical treat that offers an encompassing, breathtaking journey that deftly accomplishes the goal of presenting the evolution of a legendary rock group.
And that journey is so spectacularly chronicled with more than 350 artifacts — for example, the original album cover design drawings for Dark Side of the Moon and the boys’ school cane and caning book that inspired one of the iconic lyrics from Another Brick in the Wall – and larger than life tableaux that tells the chronological, album-by-album story of how Pink Floyd became a force in the history of rock music both in the recording studio and the concert stage.
Opening hours for The Pink Floyd Exhibition: Their Mortal Remains are 10 a.m. – 6 p.m. (Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday), 10 a.m. – 7 p.m. (Friday and Saturday), and 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. (Sunday). For more information, or to purchase tickets, go to www.pinkfloydexhibition.com.
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